Kinect - Robotics & Shrinking

 Eetimes is reporting that Microsoft Robotics is updated their services to allow users to plug the Kinect hands-free hardware, intended for gesture control of its Xbox gaming console, directly into any robot. This would add Kinect's gesture recognition software, depth cameras, and microphone arrays to robots running on an embedded Windows based computer.


Kinect mounted to iRobot

In addition, Eetimes also reports that with the acquisition Canesta Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), last year, Microsoft will be able to downsize the foot-long Kinect to about a square centimeter. This would enable tiny robots and other mobile devices, such as the Windows Phone, to perform sophisticated gesture recognition for natural user interfaces, autonomous navigation and many other tasks.